Writing Residency and Body Image/Food

About the Residency and some frank talk about me, since it is my blog. Speaking of blog: You would have thought I'd have an effective comments system well worked out by now, especially considering what a desideratum it has long been for me. I apologize for the continued woes. WordPress did not offer what I was hoping for, and the plugin I installed hoping to solve the problem has made it worse if anything. I will work on it but please bear with me, because I'm at...

The Rainier Writing Workshop's 2013 Residency--a week of intense learning, sharing, co-teaching, interacting...basically a time when even if you're an introvert you can enjoy going out at night. Morning talks crystal sharp and pealing with laughter in informal atmosphere...

Surrounded by people who also think this (picture) is hysterically funny and also took a photo of it:

...and, most of the time, we're in intimate workshops and seminars in which the most acute of critiquing or seminar-ing is compounded with the loveliest congeniality.

There have been a few times I've felt critiquing hasn't been sharp enough from certain quarters. On the other hand, my work came up for workshop yesterday and one of the two faculty leaders expressed some very serious reservations about it, the vocabulary becoming stronger as the workshop went on. But there was no gall, neither given nor taken--this was objective, if passionate, discussion of work being taken seriously. Truthfully, though, I could feel that were it not for my meds I'd have been in pieces. But I could balance that faculty member's interpretations with many thoughtful readings from other faculty and students that gave me a more hopeful picture. Any one opinion is just one opinion. Even better: knowing that my own fragile ego might have exaggerated some parts of what I heard and minimized something positive, I checked in with one of my cohorts who had been in the same workshop. She reminded me of some very positive things the faculty member had also said and that I had not paid attention to. Somehow it's easy to ignore what you're good at and only focus on the points of criticism.

I've already met with my mentor for the thesis year. She is a phenomenal writer of both poetry and nonfiction and also happens to be a great teacher. Several conceptual aspects of my work for this year fell into place so naturally at our meeting that it felt very auspicious for what's to come. 

Oh, and we both have big hair.

An epiphany that came for me today: the traditional line people draw of "fact and/or/versus fiction" is vicious both for fiction writing (cannot reflect facts) and for creative nonfiction writing (can only be the facts). So, I propose we disband fact and fiction and allow other dichotomies to emerge.

Okay. Now to Ela, Food, and Body. Last night and this morning, small groups of lovely people, it felt fine (although my guts reminded me afterwards that it wasn't fine). I confess, the food and body thing is torture. One sad thing is how similar it has been each year, although this year may be the worst for various reasons. I need to look like I'm eating but I'm mortified if I look like I'm eating. I don't want to eat anything but I need to stay functional.

We're all self conscious in some way. So. My thighs look gigantic, my belly bloated, my chin doubled. How can I even appear in public?

My belly is a beast of unnatural and prodigious appetites.

I was warned I might have unusual cravings as my body seeks iron after recent massive blood loss. And so. I have no appetite, but I'm afraid of what I start when I start eating. And I'm craving salt, which I never usually eat or desire. One day, I snuck to the cafeteria and bought a small bag of chips, as self consciously as a teenager buying condoms for the first time. Back in my room, I shook them out onto a napkin and made three piles, so that each transgression would only be about 50 calories. I put one pile back in the foil pouch and one into an old oatmeal packet, clamped the crimped edges under a book. I ate a luxurious few of the third pile just as they were, and crumbled the rest into applesauce, to dilute the craved salt.

Most of my favorite foods don't taste good. I have a metallic taste in my mouth. If I eat, it gets worse. If I don't eat, it gets worse. 

For the group meals, the catering's awareness of gluten free and nondairy has improved exponentially. Which means fewer excuses for me not to eat, or to bring my safe foods to eat. Still, every time I let them feed me it's a scary act of surrender and I always don't feel well afterwards--there's always something that doesn't agree. On the other hand, I brought so much of my own food here, but even feeding myself a lot of the time, that heap is diminishing so imperceptibly...and I thought I'd calculated it fairly well. 

Calories counting in my head all the time, the bestial belly reprimanded all the time. Grapes taste so good now, but they do not satisfy the hunger urge and meanwhile they add and add to the calorie count. Which means, help my guts to be more roilsome and noisome than any in the history of humanity.

My question for you writers out there: what could I do to the above litany of complaints so that people would be laughing along? Or are you laughing already?

If I could just be a bee enjoying the late clover...

Body Image Thoughts: The Weight of the Heart

I hope everyone's having a good weekend. Busy here, and thawing still.

Just wanted to check in with some follow up thoughts on body image and writerly goals. I'm so grateful for the sensitive and smart comments on my post about this last week. I'm also aware that I was kind of belligerent about my unwillingness to "compromise" or to accept things just as they are. And it's true: I am belligerent and defiant about this, and I recognize that that may seem a ridiculous denial of my true lack of control, and/or that it might be triggering to someone.

With that in mind, and always in the interests of ulterior harmony, balance, I offer these few thoughts to counter my own obduracy.

1) Several people have pointed this one out to me, but perhaps my own mom is the person who expressed it best: Be aware of how you appear to other people. It's so easy to get caught up in our own insecurities and inadequacies, but if we look out beyond ourselves, there are all these other people in our lives, of all different shapes and sizes. We're not in competition to be thinner than them, nor to be a better writer--one of the things I most adore about being a writer is that I always cheer on my fellow writers and really feel far more pride in their achievements than I ever feel envy. We are all co-creating one another! If I think of how I can be a part of my community, be that writing group, family, the people I'm teaching in a class, or any other group of people, and if I think of how my role and persona are perceived from the other side of my own head, I'm likely to see a different person--a valued person.

2) I might think that I can control my body by micro-managing what goes into it, but unless I grow all my own food from scratch and create my own water, I can't do that! I don't know what pesticide residues are on my produce that might affect my hormones. I don't know what low-percentage ingredient in my protein powder might upset my stomach. I don't know what the cellular constituency of my cracked-cell-wall chlorella is, or what bugs culture my kim chee. Even if I grow sprouts in a jar, I don't know what is growing on them, invisible to me! As for water, if I use city water, I'm facing chlorine and fluorine that can mess with endocrines and gut bacteria, as well as traces of prescription drugs and other chemicals. If I go for spring water, I'm opening myself up to whatever bugs all the animals upstream pooped into it (Phil had giardia just a few months ago from spring water).

3) Remember that in the Ancient Egyptian afterlife, it wasn't the weight of your body that was held in the balance against the feathers: it was the heart. And that's worth remembering as part of a writing practice, too.

Writerly Goals, Body Image, Clothing Size as Arbiter?

I mentioned in my last post that I had some body image-related issues on my mind and wanted to share. Here goes: it has to do with the whole area of goal-setting, self confidence, and my intentions for myself as a writer.

For most of my emaciated 20's, I was a small size zero, or less, and for the more functional parts of that time, I never even thought about clothing size. I was able to keep the body image demons in check through appeal to the undeniable objective fact that I was tiny. For the last four years, after my deliberate and masochistic weight gain, disordered and partial weight loss, and the beginnings of dealing with a consequent damaged thyroid, adrenals and reproductive system, I've been bigger than has been comfortable for me, and have felt relatively helpless to do anything about it, especially when I couldn't exercise at all.

Last year around May, I started being able to work out again, and have done so, strenuously and consistently. Last year too, although I was constantly dieting one way or another (it's the only way I know to eat), all the diets shared the philosophy of eating to appetite, albeit restricting something or another, with the plan that this would send thyroid function and metabolism into supercharge. Well, last November I had to have my thyroid dosage increased, so obviously that didn't work. And a month earlier, I lamented my apparent lack of succes in body composition improvements on here.

I realized that I needed to be successful in achieving my body composition goals, because otherwise I can have no confidence in my success as a writer. If I can't make the body I live in OK to me (and no, acceptance of it as it was was not an option), then how can I expect to send my work out into the world and have it received as I intend? It seemed like a gap in integrity.

A couple months ago, I set the small goal that I should be able to wear size 2 jeans by the end of February (I was wearing 4's), and have been working on it through both diet and exercise. That seemed reasonable, measurable (I don't use a scale) and not excessive in terms of being likely to trigger a relapse. It seemed to go well, and the universe was moving with me, apparently, as my appetite has been virtually nothing during this time. Now here's where it gets really interesting. We went to our favorite boutique, Value Village, when we were in Anchorage this week, and I thought it was time to grab a pair of size 2 jeans to measure my progress and have ready for a month from now. I tried on several pairs--and they all fit, comfortably, not at all tight--except for one that was too big and turned out to be a 3.

Part of me wanted to be delighted--made goal, and a month early at that. But another part of me was immediately second-guessing. I never tried to get into 2's before I started this. I always needed a belt for my 4's. I seem to have an awful lot of fat on me still for someone wearing size 2, although honestly I can definitely see a difference from three months ago. But maybe I could have worn these jeans before I even started?

Could I have been at goal without changing anything? And where should I go from here? The writerly part of me that needed this success still needs success and change body-wise. But have I gone far enough already to satisfy that, or do I need to go further?

Whatever I conclude about what I'm trying to do with my body and how far to continue, the size 2 jeans were my message to myself that I can "do it" as a writer, the impetus I needed to impel me into giving full, serious, reverent, confident attention to doing whatever it takes to be a successful, engaged, significant writer and poet. And I'm wearing those jeans right now, roomy enough for long johns underneath, so there can be no more delay or excuse.

As that t-shirt Tia sent me says, "here comes trouble"--and man, what a different season that pic was taken in!

Do you ever conflate goals like this, so that achieving one has implications for another? Curious for any feedback on this.

'Size Blind?' and Raw 'Pad Thai' Slaw

Well, happy Friday with a holiday! I hope that my previous 'recipe that wasn't' post didn't seem like too much of a cop-out (wait--is that a stray Britishism?) Today, I do have a recipe to share, and I did put some of that jicama in.

 I'll get to that in a moment. First, I want to talk about a very uncomfortable conversation I had with Phil yesterday, partly as a confession of my stupidity for initiating a potentially triggering conversation in the first place, partly to illustrate how words can evoke staggeringly different images in different people, and partly to explore the concept that a person really could be 'size blind'--could walk around looking at people without constantly tickering about relative sizes: a revolutionary concept in my little head.

Phil and I had had an interaction with a woman we hadn't met before. I noticed how her bottom came out in a pleasing round curve below her belt. I'd also, of course, meticulously calibrated that this person was built and proportioned on a significantly larger scale than myself, so I wasn't thinking of myself at all, merely curious, when I asked Phil later on whether she would be considered to have a 'nice butt.' Phil said yes, she would and, after a moment, said, "Actually, not unlike yours." Shocked and horrified, I qualified "But way bigger than mine, right?" "I don't know, I didn't notice her size," was Phil's response.

Obviously, I was traumatized and devastated and felt betrayed and all the other over-the-top responses. I was also furious with myself for laying myself open to a comparison that I found unbearable, even though that hadn't been my intention. Thankfully, I managed to pull myself out of a huge downward self-image spiral by checking in with myself and remembering that I could trust my own evaluation of our respective sizes.

When we were able to talk about it, Phil said he'd thought he was paying me a compliment. She had a nice butt, so did I: that's all there was to it. And he insisted that he doesn't notice people's different sizes and that that simply wasn't part of his comparison. Rather than try to catch him in a lie by recalling times when he has commented on people's sizes, I tried to imagine how that could be. Could it really be possible to walk around and just see people as people, see beauty as beauty, without constantly labeling 'big,' 'average,' 'small' and, specifically 'bigger than me,' 'smaller (horrors!) than me'? I realize that I allow that kind of keeping track to seep into all my experiences, unconsciously, and almost always, it reinforces my feeling badly about my body.

The truth is, I'm doing so much exercise and becoming so much stronger, and it's a gift to be able to do things that I want to do!

Whew--thanks for bearing with me on that!

On to something lighter--I was talking last time about how frequently my recipe ideas don't come to be. But sometimes, I just have to make something! I wanted to make a pad thai-type salad, light, spicy and wonderfully textured, with some kelp noodles...

...that jicama, some carrots, some early greens from our garden. Here's how it looked undressed.

I ended up using the whole 12oz package of kelp noodles because I made so much dressing.  I soaked the noodles in warm water for a few minutes before mixing them with the veggies.

Otherwise, there was:

2 julienned carrots

about half a medium jicama, julienned

3 cups mixed greens, coarsely chiffonaded

some snipped chives 

5-6 basil leaves (from our windowsill), chiffonaded

One chopped roma tomato.

For the dressing,
3/4 cup of water (or coconut water, or pickle juice, or...--I used a lot of lime juice, and it was too much with the tamarind)
a thumb-sized piece of tamarind paste
1 tablespoon miso
2 small cloves garlic
a half-inch piece of ginger
1 teaspoon curry powder
1 tablespoon red thai curry paste
2 tablespoons coconut kefir cream (homemade, can sub any raw nut-based (or other) sour cream)
1 tablespoon tahini
1/2 cup mango
a quarter of an avocado

Blend and taste, adjust seasonings (tamarind is quite sour, and depending on how sweet your mango is, you might need to add a date or a pinch of stevia).

Mix into the 'slaw. I was taking this for our weekly dinner date with Phil's daughter and her partner, and it was great that it had some time to sit (and ride in the truck) before being eaten: the texture of the kelp noodles softened up and was just wonderful.

I had some sea spaghetti courtesy of Joanna ready to go in there too...

 ...but I figured that what I was offering was weird enough to their palates and experience without such a blatantly ocean-tasting component, so I left it out of the main bowl and added it to the leftovers I ate the next day. I figured it was a good sign that there wasn't a great deal left over! It was so yummy, even if it was an 'unusual' thing for Phil and the rest of them. Thanks for bearing with me, guys! It's a very different world here from back when I used to go to raw food potlucks all the time, and pretty much any weird thing I came up with would taste great to most, and everybody would at least be willing to try. Macaroni salad this wasn't! Cole slaw this wasn't!

If you like the ocean taste, by all means add it to this: It's a different flavor and texture, but it's really good in its own way.
Coming up next, it's the time of the rhubarb!

I've been playing around and trying a few things out that I'd like to share soon.

I hope you try the 'Slaw and enjoy it. Can we be 'size blind'?

Transforming The Bad and The Ugly: Transforming Regret

The Bad and The Ugly

Most people spend their twenties exploring, pushing their boundaries, gaining life experience and qualifications, establishing themselves in careers and relationships, and perhaps starting families. I spent most of my twenties under 100lbs, including some significant time under 80. And while I did my share of exploring and experiencing, and am blessed to have made and kept some friends from those days, mostly I didn't bring things to completion, missed connections and opportunities, sold myself short and generally failed to establish myself in any way--except that I didn't die, which is surprising in itself. I spent long moments and years isolated and unable to function normally: it's still astonishing to me that I didn't get in a car wreck, and the bike that I persisted in riding barely stayed vertical from my pedaling.

my 'ugliest' recent photo

What I did achieve was my own (and any anorexic's) worst nightmare: a messed-up thyroid and adrenals and a stultifyingly slow metabolism so that now, at 33, I stay far less lean than I'd like to be on very little food: probably less than I was eating for some of my twenties. My functionality is jury-rigged with a dozen supplements and hormone helpers. 

Have you ever gotten on a rollercoaster and then, after it shot out the gate, realized that you really didn't want to be on it? Each sickening turn or dizzying plunge confirms your sense of dislocation and desire to be anywhere else. But you can't get off, and you can't turn back. That's what it feels like to be in my body. I can't turn back: if I eat any less than I regularly eat, or even if I try to skip a meal or snack, my blood sugar plummets and I can't control my mood or anything else. I can't overexercise either, or even exercise very much. And meanwhile, between huge fluctuations in fluid retained and other inscrutable things, I often seem to be getting fatter (not getting on the scale is an absolute rule, to preserve some vestige of sanity)... 



...despite meager diet and as much exercise as I can manage. Having been so very thin for so long, any fat on me at all feels and looks unbearable, and the self-directed rage that overtakes me at times is more painful than the all the physical issues. It's often followed by an inevitable upset stomach and restricting, and more of the rollercoaster: as my naturopath keeps impressing upon me, 'restricting food intake leads to more efficient fat storage.'



Then there's the intense obsession with what constitutes a healthy diet, and the faulty b.s.-meter that has allowed me to try pretty much every kind of restrictive diet out there and demonize everything, at one time or another, from fats-across-the-board to vegetables. Worst of all, from my present perspective, was allowing myself to be influenced, at a time of despair a few years ago, to try a diet program that involved deliberate and fairly hefty weight gain. Part of me insists on believing that had I not done that (and then relapsed into starvation and diet pill abuse afterwards), there wouldn't be as many fat cells lurking in my body to capitalize on the thyroid problems.

Regrets? This is my dirty secret. I don't talk to anyone about it here except for my long-suffering husband and my treatment team. It's not exaggerating to say that I was considered star potential (academically and musically) at the outset of my twenties, and to have perpetrated a major waste of the universe's resources. 

Yes, I'm ashamed. I blush at the idea that any of my friends, especially new friends, may read this, the 'bad and the ugly' of myself. But when I look at my life today, I refuse to regret my life (except for the 'condition of my physical body' part of it). I can't say that I'd have been happier as an academic or musician than I am now. I'm just getting into stride as a poet and writer, which is what I always wanted to be but somehow assumed that I had to fly high another way first. I'm meeting wonderful friends and deepening those connections, and my marriage to Phil is a blessing for which I'm daily grateful. Despite mistakes, squandering and messing up, I am grateful for where I am.



My Writing
What about my writing, then? Is it all a lie? What about all that brave joy sharing culinary artistry? What about the personal development away from control learned through driving on ice? What about taking naughty apron photos with Phil? Or the daily postings last September as part of Tina's 30 Days of Self Love? 

Actually, this is where my writing can save my life. This is where my writing, which I feel to be the best part of myself, is helping me to become a better person. I learn to conceptualize about letting go of control and to see this letting-go as a thing of beauty and an insight to be shared, so I share that. Culinary artistry and anorexia are pretty common bedfellows, but especially with the recent encouragement to create things that I enjoy too, I'm hoping that my enthusiasm for one side of the coin may spread to the other.

Also, as I mentioned in my guest post on Bitt of Raw, self-education in all sides of the nutritional story (rather than getting hung up behind the blinders of a single dogma) is something that I believe will be conducive to this kind of personal growth. That's why I keep exposing myself to writing like that of Matt Stone, who insists cogently that self-deprivation and excessive exercise ultimately lead to slowed metabolism and weight gain and that doing the reverse is what's needed for long-term leanness. I keep reading, even though he classes vegetarianism alongside all other 'restrictions' and I have absolutely no intention to start eating meat or dairy. Or gluten, obviously. Nonetheless, this is such an important message for anyone who's been caught up in a restriction mentality, maybe can't understand why it's harder to be lean nowadays, and ends up caught in an endless maze of leaps from one holy-grail diet to the next.

That's the other important part of writing saving my life: if I can share the benefit of my experience with others, and help even just one other person not to have to go through the hell of it, my gratitude will be compounded. So, I've been promising some posts on nutritional stuff for some time now, and I intend that those will be part of a process of sharpening my faulty b.s.-meter, sharing my unfortunately wide-ranging experiences on the front line of diet experimentation and metabolic damage, and an invitation to others to share their wisdom also.

Some people advise that it's better simply never to give 'the bad and the ugly' any attention at all. But sometimes, letting it out rather than holding it in can be tremendously liberating, and offers the opportunity for a locus of shame and regret to be transformed into something that helps others and is empowering and spiritual-growth-promoting.

from 'bad and ugly' to 'building an igloo?'

Do you think I can do it? Can the bad and the ugly be transformed into something integrated and broadly beneficial through creativity?

Visiting, Shopping and Body Image, Vantra Restaurant Review

It's been a whirlwind week in and around London! We really barely stopped for a moment this past week.

We saw a gorgeous sunset on Hampstead Heath (and a very cool dead tree that looks like anything you want it to)...

We enjoyed the filtered sunlight in the tall and narrow alleyways of Winchester.

We played with a pair of delightful twins (the children of some dear old friends) who loved posing for photos and then running away as soon as I pressed the shutter: two suspiciously swollen curtains...

and playing 'horses' on Phil's knee.

We visited Phil's stepson, a wonderful, welcoming person,

and spent some time with our beautiful niece, who (of course) adores Phil too, and her parents (I am so impressed with my brother and sister-in-law. Great parents, great human beings).

Traveling around the London area with public transportation is very doable, but is also quite tiring: lots of crowds, lots of walking between stations, lots of stairs up and down, lots of noisy public address announcements... And when I went shopping in Oxford Circus with my mum, I discovered that sometimes nowadays you have to 'queue' (stand in line) just to get back into the underground (subway) station!

The underground looks older - the trains that I remember spanking new in my teens are obviously close to twenty years old now, graffiti'd and worn-out-looking. Lots of renovations and line closures at awkward moments. But I'd never seen building materials stacked under the tracks before! See all those piles of blocks?

I was ambivalent about going shopping with my mum. First of all, I'm a terrible shopper. Second, I don't like crowds. And third, and worst, I had tried on an old pair of trousers (pants) at my folks' home, that I'd worn since my early teens and wore last time I was here three years ago, and they fitted just fine, except that I couldn't do them up! Admittedly, three years ago I still weighed in the double digits, which I no longer do and which most people say I shouldn't, but this threw me for a major loop and gave me little interest in buying clothes, eating, or doing anything except crunches!

But actually, we had a great time. The shopping itself was quite smooth, despite the crowds and the rain, and I learned a funny thing about clothes sizing too. In the photo below, the pants on the left are a size larger than the pants on the right, in a different style.

The purple cords on the left, in the larger size, were tight on my waist and loose elsewhere. The black ones on the right, a size smaller, were very comfortable and quite loose around the waist! Go figure... Not surprisingly, I got the black ones - and my mum got a pair too, so we were both happy.

By the time we got done, it was long past lunchtime, and perhaps I was a little more interested in lunch with that lesson in clothing sizes. And having made you cringe a bit with that body image talk, it's time for a restaurant review! I blogged earlier about our visit to Vita Organic and how they told us that their 'raw food' operation had mostly moved to their new premises in Soho Street.

Mum and I hiked down to Soho Street to find the new place, Vantra.

Liked the look of that mission statement! Liked the young coconuts (whole, not shaved) on the bar.

But 'coming soon' is the operative term: they have a beautiful buffet featuring a lot of raw salads and also a lot of cooked vegan food with sprouts and vegetables and beautiful sauces...

...all along the window to the street, a tempting arrangement... But they don't have any of the raw gourmet stuff yet: the lasagnas, pizzas, etc: that's all 'coming soon.' They do have nut milks and smoothie options, and we got a raspberry-cacao smoothie with nut milk and sweetened with coconut crystals to go with our lunch. One time through the buffet is 6 pounds per person, no sharing. All the plates and 'silverware' are compostable/recycled (great concept, I guess, for a new, up-and-coming place not to have to do dishes on top of everything.

Here's my plate:

(mostly raw, lots of sea veggies and sprouts, but I had to try those giant cooked mushrooms and a piece of aubergine (eggplant) simmered in coconut milk). My mum's plate:

We have some similar tastes! But I wasn't sure about the gluten status of those noodles at 11 o'clock on her plate, or the creamy mixture at 2 o'clock, so stayed away on the safe side.

Naughty me for having cacao, but my mum agreed that the smoothie was delicious! They brought a bottle of agave along when they served it, in case we wanted it sweeter. It was plenty sweet just as it was (no agave for me, thanks)!

She took a pic of me too (but it's a little blurry).

It was a delicious and satisfying meal, at a pretty decent price for central London. I was thrilled that my mum really liked it too, and that she was talking about going back with various friends of hers whom she's sure will love it. It makes me so happy when I can introduce someone to something I enjoy and have them enjoy it too. However, my search for a genuine 'raw' restaurant is still unfulfilled, although if you wanted to eat purely raw at Vantra or Vita-O, they do have a very extensive selection of salads, plus the various nut milks and smoothies. I was sorry that they didn't have any raw desserts, especially since they claim to espouse a low-glycemic philosophy, but truth be told, I generally prefer smoothies anyway.

I'll share more as I can. Just a few more days here, and I'm quite tired today and hoping for some slower-paced days. Back home is snow-bound!

How are you preparing for Thanksgiving?

Reflections on Self-Love #4 - Trusting our Bodies

I only have time for a very brief post here - neighbors coming to dinner in 20 mins and had to catch up on work today. Gray day, but grateful day also. I love that we are reflecting on self-love, that my husband is helping me to become more conscious about my habits that don't serve me or us best, that I am receiving support and validation from the universe as I pursue my writing vocation.

Today's post on reflections on self love - In what area do you know you need to trust your body more? How do you plan to do so today?

I wish I had time to do this full justice, as I had a small epiphany about precisely this just yesterday. Briefly, though: I need to trust my body when she says she's hungry, and stop telling her she has to go longer without food or get by with less food. The latter are such strong habits and they are so destructive to my body, and to my relationship with it. Ideally, we should be so much in our bodies that we don't have relationship with them - we simply are them. This is something I've been getting better at, but every day I need to work on breaking those habits both of thought and of behavior.

Love to hear others' thoughts too.